5 Things You Should Know About Wreck City's Demo Tape

Demo Tape is the name for a new art installation that opens Friday, as part of Sled Island, at the site of the former Penguin Car Wash in Ramsay. It’s a collectively curated exhibition featuring the work of 50 artists, many of whom scavenged through the remains of the car wash for the material they used to create their pieces. Here’s five things you should know about Demo Tape.

1. What’s Wreck City? (Demo Tape is the third edition of the exhibition).

“Wreck City has evolved a lot,” says Demo Tape co-curator (along with seven others) Caitlind r.c. Brown, “but there are a lot of things that are consistent with the other projects — and one of those happens to be (creating art in) free, open spaces where we can do whatever we need to do, within reason. It’s like this idea of, OK, we could install site specific artworks in the middle of a field if we wanted to — or we could install them in a brand-new building, but do those spaces allow our artists to have the most freedom possible? And (by creating it inside) pre-demolition buildings — it seems like — they’re the ones no one is as attached to, (and those are) the spaces we need and feel most comfortable in, with the work that we ask for: buildings that aren’t going to be preserved. It’s a weird thing. One of the artists put it best, I think, he was like, I love Wreck City, but I wish I lived in a city where it wasn’t possible. That’s Palmer Olson.”

2. Who are the artists? Some come from the Alberta College of Art and Design. Others come from the University of Calgary. Lena Elliott studied at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. Curator Natalie Maclean studied at the Massuchesetts College of Art and Design. Bogdan Cheta is from Bucharest, although he now lives in Calgary. Katarzyna Koralewska was born and studied art in Poland. “We have artists (from) as close as two blocks from here,” says Brown, “and as far away as Whitehorse, Toronto, Surrey, B.C. and Edmonton (and Windsor).

Caitlind Brown, centre, Natalie MacLean, right, and Brandon Dalmer, all curators of Wreck City’s Demo Tape which takes place in participation with 2015 Sled City, in in the Beavis and Butthead room, an art installation piece by Ema Clarke and Igor Gyozdenovic at the closed down Penguin Car Wash in Ramsay in Calgary.Crystal Schick /
Calgary Herald

3. The artists reinvent industrial junk by turning it into beautiful objects.

“Totally,” says Brown. “Without that being the point of it, necessarily. Recycling — again it’s a financial thing. We haven’t got a lot of money, but we like really big things. That leads to a lot of things. You get interested in the history of objects, which is something that I think that is easy to carry away as a curator. (Creative collaborator) Wayne (Garrett) and I think about that all of the time when we make work. It’s just when you make work with objects that are used, they come carrying history with them and that history — if you can utilize it properly — has so much more dimension and depth than (making work with) a brand new object ever would.”

Caitlind Brown, curator of Wreck City’s Demo Tape which takes place in participation with 2015 Sled City, looks at the hand made flowers in Rachelle Quinn’s and Ben Nixon’s art installation piece at the closed down Penguin Car Wash in Ramsay in Calgary.Crystal Schick /
Calgary Herald

4. There’s a windmill on the roof. That’s because one room will be transformed — by artists Lane Shordee and Desiree Nault — through the use of a handmade metal sieve (made out of recycled material rescued from the car wash) that rotates from the ceiling, says Brown. The sieve “will be installed overhead, and then there are 24 kilograms of iridescent confetti they imported — that will slowly be squished through the sieve, as the windmill outside turns it. The idea is this will be a perpetual confetti room — sort of a snow globe, where it’s always snowing — which is pretty playful.” (The artists also fixed the leaky roof, have knocked down walls and added a window to the slated-for-demolition building.)

5. Wrecktum. It’s a piece of interactive sculpture, created by Lena Elliott and Gwen Morgan, out of abandoned soap tanks, that simulates the inside of a sphincter, including spray foam painted pink that simulates vital organs. “I go to ACAD,” says Morgan, “and Leena went to NSCAD and we both experiment with stuff that relates to the body and these sort of materials, so we naturally came together to make this. I guess we kind of thought of the idea because of the car wash — we wanted to compare the body to the car wash and the cleansing system. These were just here (the tanks). They just gave us this room, with no idea that we were going to use these and we were like, this is perfect. It is a great coincidence.”

This Week's Flyers

Comments

Postmedia is pleased to bring you a new commenting experience. We are committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion and encourage all readers to share their views on our articles. Comments may take up to an hour for moderation before appearing on the site. We ask you to keep your comments relevant and respectful. Visit our Community Guidelines for more information.